But just a week or so ago, for the very first time in history, the United Nations reached an accord on FGM. The members have at last signed up in principle to the notion that all female genital mutilation is unacceptable and that the 'practice' must stop forthwith.

In part the lamentable inaction in Britain on FGM must surely be because our own culture too often accepts a view of women as without entitlement. We are perhaps squeamish, perhaps sexist or patriarchal. We maybe don't want to know about what's done to girls 'down there'.

If Lord Justice Leveson helps us as a nation to understand that no-one has the 'right' to see others as less than individual human beings - not, for instance, as sexual objects to be determined by others, but with entitlement to our own minds and bodies - he will have delivered a massive step forward for girls and women, and thereby also for boys and men.

The position now adopted by the United Nations also requires that people are seen as.... well, people. In their own right. The new UN agreement reaches many corners of the globe where enquiries such as Lord Leveson's are probably unimaginable.

It is to be hoped that what follows from the Leveson Report here in our own little island will resonate with the achievement of the last week, after many years of hard work, by the United Nations.

The language so far has been formal and legal, but the real battle is for hearts and minds. We all need to understand that ignoring or dismissing the rights of others permits overbearing and sometimes downright nasty behaviour.

There must surely be a way for us in the UK to consolidate our shared, national view of human rights so that we perceive our own fellow citizens - not least girls and women - as people, not as puppets for the press.

That shift in perceptions will also help the global move towards freedom from the much more brutal oppressions, including the shameful cruelty of female genital mutilation, which some girls and women in our own land, and many others in places elsewhere, currently endure.